The present invention relates generally to ECG analyzers, and more specifically to ambulatory ECG analyzers and reporters.
It is well recognized that there is a need to monitor the ECG of a patient during a 24 hour period of normal activity versus the setimentary ECG monitoring in an office. To improve the analysis of the patient, real time ECG monitors and recorders, which are capable of being carried on the patient, have been developed To keep the size of the device down, the systems have compromised the ability to make sohpisticated decisions. Generally, the prior art uses a magic formula or algorithm to determine QRS waveforms and to provide some real time analysis. These systems are difficult to implement as well as require substantial fine tuning in order to properly identify QRS waveforms and to extract the needed information as well as classifying the waves for a plurality of atypical events. Similarly, because of limited storage space, only a limited number of ECG data strips could be stored. Crude attempts at prioritizing the data strips to be stored have been used.
An object of the present invention is to provide an ambulatory ECG analyzer and reporting system which provides substantially more real time data than previously available.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an embulatory ECG analyzer and recorder with a more efficient memory priority system.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an ECG analyzer using a correlation process between two input channels.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an ECG analyzer and reporting system which is capable of monitoring the impedance of the leads before the monitoring period.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a moving ECG display on an electronic display from digital data.
An even further object of the present invention is to provide an ambulatory ECG analyzer which is capable of detecting and eliminating pacemaker spikes.
A still even further object of the present invention is to provide a memory mapping in the ambulatory unit to increase the addressing capability of the memory beyond that of the standard CPU ability.
Yet another further object of the present invention is to provide a QRS identification and classification scheme based on a heierarchy of decision making processes and including previously determined information.
These and other objects will be apparent from the following detailed description of the drawings.